Your team's skills need capacity

It seems so obvious that capability is one of the pillars of high performing teams. No matter how cohesive they are, teams need to have the ability to complete the tasks that are required of them. Our ability to get the job done is about more than our skills.

A useful way to consider capability is as skill level combined with capacity. So often, we assume that because we or our team have the skills to meet a challenge we are facing, we will be able to achieve our goal. It is worth considering whether we also have sufficient capacity.

It’s often the case that teams are running low on capacity as opposed to lacking the skills. Almost every team that I work with indicates that they could improve their performance if they were able to increase the time they spent on the most important aspects of their work. Teams need to invest in creating the space, the habits and processes that allow them to have more capacity. In your team, it is likely to mean some decisions about how you work together, what work you will prioritise and how you can carve out time for regenerating energy (individually and collectively).

A dangerous assumption is that working better requires us to work harder and longer. Most of our teams are working as hard as we can and that makes the idea of better work either unobtainable or unappealing (if it means more hours of harder work). Decoupling working harder and working better in our mind could free us to move towards an optimal experience in our teams.

Some questions for you to consider this week:

1. Could your team do better quality work if there was less demand on their energy, attention and time? If so, this will indicate that capacity is limiting performance to some extent.
2. Is there anything that your team is struggling with in spite of adequate capacity? If so, this will indicate that a skill gap is limiting performance to some extent.

Go well,

Keegan

About the Author

Keegan Luiters is an independent consultant who works to bring teams together and elevate their performance.

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